Alder cones affect pH and color in aquarium

alder cones for sale

How does alder cones affect pH and color in aquarium?
I have read that you can lower the pH of the aquarium with the help of
alder cones and have made this little experiment.

4 glasses with 3 dl of water each
First glass with 0 alder cones
Second glass with 1 alder cone
Third glass with 2 alder cones
Fourth glass with 6 alder cones

Picture of how alder cones affect the pH and changing the color of water:

Picture is taken after 12 hours

300 cones are sufficient to get down to pH 6.86 after 36 hours in a 100
liter aquarium. There are likely to be even lower pH after a few days. My
experiment show nothing but what happens after 36 hours with 1, 2 and 6
cones in 3 dl of water.

I know nothing yet about long-term effects from alder cones.

If you are going to try alder cones yourself I suggest not to put in too
many cones in the beginning, but take fewer and measuring the pH
continuously.

Now I will test what influence one cone has in 10 liters of stockholm water.
I’ll be back later with results.

I have now made measurements with one cone in 4 liters of water respectively 10 liters of water. Some strange results! 2005-06-16

The bowl with 4 liters of water got pH 7.37 after 2 days.
The bowl with 10 liters of water got pH 7.17 after 2 days.
Cones was approximately of equal size.

Weird to say the least!
It differs a lot from cone to cone, which was perhaps expected.
One reason may be that I picked some of the cones from the ground while
most of them were picked directly from the tree. The cone in the 4-liter
was perhaps one from the ground and watered from the recent rains. Cones
from the tree can also have had very different amount of rainwater pored
over them.

New measurements in the glasses

After 84 hours, it has now the follwing pH:
Glass with 0 cones: 7.81
Glass with 1 cones: 6.82
Glass with 2 cones: 4.98
Glass with 6 cones: 4.11

(The colors are much darker than in the picture)